


On Ceremony

by ottermo



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, i just needed Jakes to get a hug okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 05:10:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1497820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>She whispers inadequacies and hopes they translate as comfort, hopes he knows she's trying even if she'll never understand.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Ceremony

**Author's Note:**

> If you can still class yourself as a functioning human being after that devastating finale, I salute you, and offer the evidence of my brokenness. Poor, _poor_ Jakes....

She finally plucks up the courage to visit on her own around lunch time on the third day. The first time, with Mum and Sam, was all tears and terror and blood and hopelessness, and afterwards she hadn't been sure she'd ever be able to face the room again, the figure that was perhaps her father draining into the bedsheets, so still she had to concentrate to see he was breathing. Not, at least, without her mother, or at least Sam, to share the horror with, as if pain was diluted somehow by the extra presence. It's a ridiculous idea - she knows that. Knowing it, though, makes not the slightest bit of difference.

But today is a new day, and he's stabilised, the telephone call this morning said. Not out of the woods by any means, not even joined the nature ramble yet - but stable. Two such beautiful syllables have surely never been uttered.

It's more than she dared hope yesterday, and the day before. The glimmer of light is enough to button up her jacket and send her on her way to the hospital, and once there it pushes her all the way up the stairs and along to the door to his room.

She counts to twenty, and the childhood habit of counting out the letters of her full name calms her slightly. _Joan...Winifred...T, h, u, r, s...d...a...y._ On 'y', she turns the handle of the door, braces herself, and enters.

She's expecting one occupant, but she's met with two. Next to Dad, lying prone on the bed, there's a couple of chairs. On one of them sits the second person, hunched and bent, hands running through dark hair over and over and over. Maybe it's the contrast of Dad's eerie stillness, or maybe the man really is shaking so violently - either way, most of Joan's thoughts are taken up by the realisation that it's _Sergeant Jakes_ she's seeing, and that something is very, very the matter with him. 

For a moment she's convinced that she should turn and leave at once: it seems wrong, obscene almost, to intrude on such a situation, to provide a living witness to Jakes' obvious pain where, if there was none, he might overcome it more easily. Who is she to presume to be able to help him? They went on one date. They've perhaps met less than five times. She has no claim, no....obligation.

And that's what makes her stay, the realisation that she wants to leave only to save herself from his demons. What had she been thinking, only minutes ago, about the dilution of pain? Perhaps she can do less than nothing for the man, perhaps he won't let her try, but Thursdays do not just leave, and she cannot know for certain if she turns and runs away. And so she steps, not backward, but forward.

"Peter?" 

The smallest of flinches separates itself from his shuddering - he hadn't heard her come in - but he makes no move to look at her or speak. Another step.

"Peter, is there anything I can do?"

What a question. Surely no answer exists. She puts her handbag on the floor next to the bed, for want of something to achieve, and almost misses his movement. Hands pulling away from his head to hang limply in his lap, he leans back until he's upright and stares, empty, at the wall. He shakes his head. _No._ And then for a moment he's completely static, before he starts to shake again and then, to her horror, he's actually _crying_ and not even hiding it. It's uncomfortable to watch anybody break like that, but something about the fact that it's _Jakes_ and something in the short, gasping breaths make it truly harrowing to behold, his trauma traumatising in itself. 

She stands there for several seconds, rigid, as if on guard. 

Finally there's only one thing for it - she scrapes what's left of him off the chair and into her arms, holding on tight as if it's the most natural thing in the world, as if this isn't the most lost she's ever felt. He's all limbs and corners, folding around her haphazardly, desperately. 

She has no idea what's happened. As far as she was aware Jakes wasn't even present when Dad...when the _shooting_ happened. Morse was, but he's in custody apparently, something she hasn't even tried to get her head round yet. Nobody's mentioned Jakes at all since the news first reached the Thursday household. This must be something else, but she decides she doesn't need to know. She whispers inadequacies and hopes they translate as comfort, hopes he knows she's trying even if she'll never understand. 

It's an embrace that seems to last longer than their entire evening together all those months ago. Funny. Compared to now she hadn't felt an ounce of passion for him back then, just mild interest she could have coaxed into lust if he hadn't disappeared halfway through their date. But in this moment - this eternal, excruciating moment - it's as if every drop of her empathy is seeping into the dark unknown of his turmoil, because he might be sneery and pompous and not all that nice but right now he's in pieces, broken more completely than she's ever seen a person. She's seen heartbreak, despair - she's seen her mother when they told her her husband had been shot and was close to death. This is not the same. It's not the shock of recent events, it seems...older. The final snapping of the ancient dam, not the soil banks of the river. 

Almost guiltily, she refocuses her eyes to gaze at her father over Jakes' shoulder. She'd come here to hold his hand and murmur softly about her day at work, not to do... whatever _this_ is called, but somehow she thinks he'll forgive her. Morse is his favourite, but he's fond of Jakes too in a way, she knows, and her father, the kindest man in creation, would want her to help him. Or at least to try.

She gathers words tentatively, queues them up in phrases before beginning to whisper, "I don't know how to help you, Peter, and I won't ask you to talk, but if you need me, don't...don't stand on ceremony, all right?" 

It's one of Dad's turns of phrase, and she's long understood it to represent patience and acceptance and hope, even when it's said jovially from the breakfast table or on the doorstep. It means _don't be your uniform, be one of us. Share your heart with us_. "You just come and find me."

He won't, she knows. But she's a Thursday, after all, and Thursdays don't just _leave_.


End file.
